How to Write Professional Dialog

As you know, dialogue is one of the fundamental attributes of a story. If you want your film, television show, or novel to be believable, dramatic, and memorable it must have good professional dialog. But what exactly is that?

Novelist Ayn Rand in one of her letters gave important tips about dialogue to a budding fiction writer.

Following is an excerpt from Rand’s 1944 letter to (renowned investor) Gerald Loeb. Loeb had sent Rand drafts of one of his short stories and raised the topic of his dialogue. Rand’s reply to Loeb included the following passage:

“…the problem of a dialogue writer is a subtle one: he must make his dialogue sound as if this is the way people really talk—and yet write it with a brevity, clarity and economy of words never achieved by anybody in real-life talk. He must never allow an extra line which has no specific purpose. He must have every line carry either exposition or characterization—and usually both. But he cannot allow his characters to talk so precisely that they will sound stilted. The trick is to select out of people’s normal expressions those lines that are representative, that can give you—in one flash—the whole idea of the person or subject discussed, while sounding completely natural. It is a very difficult trick—and I was surprised to see how well you’ve done it.

“I can clarify this best on the example of your own dialogue. Take your first line. When Tom enters, Olivia says: “Well, I never.” That is all—and it’s perfect for its purpose. It shows surprise, and rudeness, and a woman who talks in bromides. In real life, she would have said that and a great deal more. But you omitted the “more”; that line was enough, it said everything, yet was natural. You could have selected another popular bromide—but most of them would have been meaningless—you picked the one that was characteristic. This is true of all your dialogue in the scene. All of it is the natural expression of a person and suggests a lot beyond the actual words used. “Come over now and sit on the bed and watch me dress but be a good boy”—is a swell line. It gives you the complete picture of a sloppy little tart without taste or manners.” (1)

Actionable Creative Takeaway

Excellent advice about writing dialogue. How can writers apply this insight of Rand’s?

First, look for representative and suggestive expressions in the dialog of your own characters. That is, when you are editing your story check if your characters are using distinctive essential expressions that reveal them and make them real. If yes, well done. If not, at least you are now aware of this lack and know what to fix. That is always a good first step to learning a needed skill.

A good second step is to look for these types of expressions in well written novels and films. Study these examples, think about them, see their value and effect.

Both these steps will increase your awareness of this important dialogue principle and so press it deeper into your subconscious mind as a writing premise to put such expressions into the mouths of your characters.

And third, the practice of when you are drafting your stories and using such expressions will further press this writing premise into your mind.

What you eventually need to happen is that this dialog writing premise will become so deeply implanted in your mind that when you are drafting a story such characterizing dialog expressions will flow naturally from your characters, they will happen automatically.

The above process is the general approach of how to learn the key writing premises that underly fiction writing.

If, however, your dialogue remains stilted and lacks implication and individual realistic voices, you may very well need to work on layering your characters. One-layer characters generally will not speak natural sounding, characterizing dialogue. How to give your characters layers and individualized voices may be the subject of a later post. But for now, all the very best applying Rand’s essential observation about what is the key to realistic, characterizing, and professional dialogue!

(1) Letters of Ayn Rand, edited by Michael S. Berliner, NAL/Penguin (HC), 1995, pp 131-36.

Learn more about Rand’s letters. https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Ayn-Rand/dp/0452274044 

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